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Benton County Republicans is a non-profit organization based in Benton County, Minnesota. Our goal is to educate the people of Benton County and the State of Minnesota on conservative principles and to advocate the Republican Party's philosophy and initiatives while empowering men and women of all ages, ethnicity and backgrounds in the political process. Join us as we share ideas, form friendships and help good, conservative candidates get elected through volunteer work and political activism.

Dear Fellow Minnesota Republican Activists:The Republican National Committee will be meeting this week in Charlotte to elect a leadership team and address several issues regarding the 2012 election.Several of us on the RNC Rules Committee have been corresponding for the past several weeks about how best to deal with the changes made at the 2012 National Convention in Tampa to the Rules of the Republican Party. After considering several different options, we’ve decided to move forward with an attempt to reverse the Rules changes at our RNC General Session this Friday.Committeeman Morton Blackwell from Virginia, one of the longest-serving members of the RNC, is taking the lead with a motion to restore our Rules to the text that was unanimously approved last year by the Republican National Committee. The only exception would be the new Rule 12, which grants the RNC the power to change the Rules and, ironically, allows us to restore the Rules to their pre-convention form. The language in Rule 12 disallows the RNC from changing Rule 12; that will need to be addressed at the 2016 Republican National Convention.Among the changes that would be reversed under this motion is Rule 16 that dictates to states how we allocate our national convention delegates and significantly complicates Minnesota’s caucus/convention calendar.All three of your RNC members from Minnesota – Chairman Pat Shortridge, Committeewoman Janet Beihoffer and me – intend to support this motion and I intend to speak to it at the RNC meeting on Friday.Bottom line: Most activists (regardless of who we supported for the Republican nomination) feel strongly that the Rules changes made at the Tampa convention were little more than a power grab by the RNC from state parties and activists – just the opposite of what we believe the GOP should be doing.I don’t know how this motion will fare on Friday, but I’m hopeful. We shall see…Thanks!Jeff Johnson – Minnesota’s Republican National Committeeman

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